


can you swim (just by kicking out)

by from



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Actor Harry, Developing Relationship, Friendship/Love, Hiatus, M/M, Post-Zayn One Direction, Solo Niall - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 01:17:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4941151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/from/pseuds/from
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Niall thought he'd got good at finding a way to be him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	can you swim (just by kicking out)

**Author's Note:**

> title from rhodes' _turning back around_

The sun is golden on Harry's back and Niall thinks if he can say it now, with the hyacinths in their place by the window and the walls cocooning them, it must be true. 

"LA's not for me, Haz."

Harry slowly rolls over. "Why's that?"

He thinks of the three weeks he's been here, waking up to spring sunshine and Harry marking their hikes in valleys near the city with where the wildflowers are, clumped like upturned teacups and faces of people they’ve known. Two rounds of golf a day whenever he's wanted it. Harry in his arms whenever they're alone. 

"The weather's not shit enough."

"So go away and come back when you've had your fill of shit weather."

Niall cups Harry's muscled shoulder. Harry’s skin is damp from the morning heat but still so smooth underneath his hand. He rubs his thumb over the little nub of collarbone. "Might not be for months."

"That's such rubbish," Harry says, smiling now, eyelids fluttering shut. Niall knows he's got less than a minute before being snuggled up to, but he can't stop touching him. "'S only gonna be a few days before you complain about not being able to eat all that grilled flesh outdoors and your knee aching."

"Yeah," Niall agrees. "But maybe I'll get a patio with a roof on it for the place in Dublin."

"Mm. And then we can fuck on it without anyone seeing."

"I have a feeling someone would see us if we're fucking on a roof. In Dublin we'd probably get a few cheering us on."

"Not on the roof, Niall. On the patio."

"I thought we'd agreed on this. No fucking where we eat."

"Yeah," Harry sighs. "We did."

"So when you gonna come see me in Dublin?"

Harry stops midway through his snuggle up move. It's always so slick before and Niall feels a bubble of laughter rising up, sharp in his stomach where he's trying to keep it.

"That's not for ages, isn't it?" Harry asks. Then he smirks, probably because he's remembering the time it took for Niall to find a place in London. "Have you even started looking?"

"Got a few emails from the agent with some listings the other day. A couple of them looked good."

"Oh." Harry pivots back and rubs his eyes open, his elbow in Niall's face. "You're off to have a look soon then?"

Here it comes, Niall thinks, and pushes himself towards it instead. "Was thinking next week."

"But you'll be back for Harvey's party?"

Niall has no idea which party he's talking about or who Harvey even is or how on earth Harry thinks they could show up at a party together, but he doesn't have to. He's not planning on being back for anything soon, not unless it's an emergency or Harry packing up and moving home. "Mate, 's not that I don't want to," he says, "but this year's supposed to be about staying put for me."

"Don't, Niall. Don't 'mate' me when we're talking about this."

"We're mates before we're anything else. We agreed on that too."

Harry sits up, drawing the sheets away with him. "I need to be here. I've got work here."

"Then be here. And come see me when _you_ want some shit weather." 

"If the film is a go, they're saying the shoot's gonna mostly be in Vancouver," he says, snuffling as if he's just finally waking up. Niall's hand is on Harry's back, rubbing across the dips low on his torso even before Niall's aware of moving it. "It rains a lot up there."

"Haz."

"We can get a place. With a spare room for the guitars and the Wurlitzer."

"You want me to bring my gear to Vancouver."

"I want you with me."

The one thing he's missed from having a normal life is people being honest with him instead of saying shit just to please him, but when it's coming from Harry, he’s not sure he always wants it. "Harry. Listen to me, I'm not gonna just hang around Vancouver while you're shooting a film."

"It's beautiful up there. There's good golfing. And Seattle's just a few hours' drive. You've always said it'd be wicked to properly visit. We could do like, road trips on my days off."

"What do you think the press will make of that? Us shacking up together and taking mini-breaks round North America?"

Maybe it's a little harsh, bringing up the press. There's a strop building up now in the tightness of Harry's back. "I don't know, Nialler. We're _mates _first and foremost, aren't we?"__

__"Don't be a shit, H."_ _

__"What happened to wanting to record where the Eagles recorded? Or the Stones, or Fleetwood Mac?"_ _

__"I _said_ it would be sick to do that, but I'm not Zayn. I don't need to go to LA and take fecking LA selfies for inspiration to make music."_ _

__"What?" The sheets are tight over his thighs now, Harry bunching them up in his fists like there's tide setting in. "Why the fuck are you bringing him into this? What you're saying is you're not me."_ _

__"I'm going for a swim," Niall says, and digs his way out of Harry's bed, slipping his glasses on._ _

__"Why d'you need glasses if you're just going for a swim?"_ _

__"There's no why to everything, Haz. I just like knowing where they are."_ _

__

____

#

The terracotta tiles are cool under his gnarled feet and Niall is back in the holiday rentals in the south of Spain where his mum liked to take them after the divorce, the smell of a full English with chorizo in the mornings, him picking up Spanish to please her, and Greg flirting with the British pensioners and kissing their granddaughters. He got good at counting days there, at sorting his things for the heat and the cold. He got good at finding a way to be him.

He goes for a piss in the bathroom at the bottom of the stairs, feeling a kind of pleasure at the flush still working well after the tinkering he did the other day.

It takes him a few minutes to find a pair of trunks in the mess that's the ground floor. They're Harry's, but he likes his loose and Harry likes his tight.

The water knifes at his skin when he dives in, forgetting how early it is. He does a few strokes of the crawl and switches to breaststroke. Pull, kick, hold the glide. Pull, kick, hold the glide. Rhythm guitar on Little White Lies and fucking stadium gold, he thinks, laughing as he goes up for air.

When his knee starts to complain halfway through his run of laps, he goes back to the crawl. 

It's choppy, his body dragging a bit in between catches. He knows it's because he's rushing it, already wanting the cool down. 

He pushes. He's got three laps left, and two, and one, and then he's bobbed up and sideways, taking in water, his heart juddering.

He breaks through the surface, finding sky and Harry hacking and spitting right back at him.

"What the fuck, Harry!" He wipes his face, pushing his hair back. It feels like there are orthodontic pins all along his throat and up his nose and ears.

"I just wanted to kiss ya," Harry says, eyes as red as his lips. "We'd never done that before. Kiss in the water."

Fecking idiot. "And I don't think we've done it yet. I've swallowed about a pint of pool water, though, and that's a first."

"You alright?"

"You're supposed to do it upright, you idiot. And with mouths closed."

"Been kissing underwater a lot, have you?"

"Yeah." He rolls his eyes. "Loads."

"Really?" Harry asks, in that tone he uses when he's storing up information for his lyrics or wank bank. Not much of a difference there, Louis once said.

"Yeah, Zayn showed me. Slipped me in between Perrie and them groupies."

"Fuck off," Harry says, splashing water at him, but it's only more wet and he's already soaked inside out. Then quietly, "Don't joke about that."

Niall won't apologise. He had to live through the ugly parts of nonstop touring back to back as much as everyone else on their team and once they treated him as the one who made other people feel better, he'd taken it on as part of the job. He's loved Zayn and he's loved Harry. Now that it's over and the feeling's stayed, it's his right to make jokes about them. 

"You're my first in the band, Haz," he tells Harry what he should already know, turning around as he wades away, "and you're my last."

There's a hand on his arm, and then two slipping around his torso to hold him.

"Wait," Harry demands. "I want my underwater kiss." He leans in, his breathing rocking them. "Please."

It takes two tries, and Niall can't really feel anything of Harry's lips, but he can feel the burn in his eyes when he looks into Harry's through the pearly water.

He knows what his own smile is about and it's shit and glorious at the same time. He really needs to leave, he thinks, and kicks to pull Harry out of the water and push him against the wall, wanting just the taste of him, wanting to already miss him.

__

____

#

"We have the best sex," Harry declares, spread-eagled on the bed.

"Yeah we do," Niall says, laughing, wiping Harry down with a t-shirt he found on the chair next to the laundry basket before getting back in.

"Do you really want to give that up too?"

"Stop being a manipulative little shit," he says in his best bored-Liam voice.

"I'm being realistic, Niall," Harry says, drawing circles on his stomach. "I'm not good at long distance. Neither are you."

Niall exhales. "I miss my TV." He knows Harry's heard the complaint before. It's practically the chorus halfway into tour. It's why Harry won't take it personally.

"So I'm up against a sixty-inch, am I?"

"Yep. And a dick joke isn't gonna help ya," Niall says, leaning over to blow out the candle. He's fucked Harry enough times in here he can't smell that particular scent without getting a semi even after they've just gone, and he'd like to go to sleep now, thanks.

"I don't wanna piss you off when you're trying to sleep so I'm just going to say this, all right?" Harry says quietly. "I know I'm not stadiums and performing to seventy-thousand people every night. I know I'm not worth all the sacrifices we made to be a part of the band. But we're good together, aren't we?"

Niall stays awake for a long while after that, the little shit snoring contentedly in the crook of his arm.

__

____

#

"How's the patio?" Harry asks, the timbre of his voice sharp through the phone.

"There's no roof on it yet."

"Bobby got over that cold yet? He's not still going back and forth every day, is he? Did you tell him there's no hurry?"

Niall has a feeling Bobby already knows. It breaks his heart sometimes, the way his father looks at him whenever he's over in Ireland, like he wishes there's more he could do for his boy than go over construction costs and monitor a building site for him. Niall wants to be able to tell Bobby that he’s already doing more for him. That there's gonna be a time when he's not on the road and the Dublin house will end up being home.

"What time are you getting back, Haz?"

"Seven, maybe eight? I'll pick something up."

"I've got that chorus, I reckon. I'll play it for ya later."

"Well done, Niall," Harry whoops and promptly snorts. "Oh god. Sorry," he says, hacking and clearing his throat. "Got cinnamon latte up my nose.” The idiot. “Can't you play it for me right now?"

"No. Later. And stop trying to drink and talk at the same time," he says, hanging up. Harry's goodbyes take too long and he's not in the mood, not when he's just got off a twelve-hour flight.

He looks at the Gibson he's brought over this time, the one Harry bought for him in the States a couple of years ago, and picks it up.  


__

____

~

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. Do you happen to know the size of Niall Horan's TV? I had to guess and went with 60". I'm also [on tumblr](http://fromward.tumblr.com) if you want to say hi over there. Thank you for reading.


End file.
